Beijing's efforts to improve its media technology are part of its public opinion warfare against Taiwan, an expert attending a cross-strait forum said yesterday, while calling on citizen reporters to help push press freedom and democracy in China.
Wang Tan-ping (汪誕平), director of the state-owned Radio Taiwan International (RTI), said since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office in May last year, media exchanges and cooperation between Taipei and Beijing have increased. However, the relationship between Taiwanese media and their Chinese counterpart is complicated.
“While there is cooperation, there is also competition. They have become more open, but there are still many restrictions,” he said. “There are some breakthroughs, but there are obstructions. There are exchanges, and yet there are still doubts.”
Wang made the remarks during a forum entitled “Cross-Strait Media Exchanges and Cooperation in the WEB2.0 Era.” The event was co-sponsored by Ming Chuan University at the Ambassador Hotel in Taipei yesterday morning.
Wang said while the size of China's newspapers and of its Web and mobile phone users are much bigger than Taiwan's, Taiwan leads in the size of its of satellite news gathering (SNG) network, with 82 SNG units in 2006.
Despite improvements in Chinese media technology, Wang said Beijing still considers the media a tool for propaganda and opinion warfare.
However, the increasing popularity of citizen reporters could serve as a catalyst for press freedom and democratic politics in China, Wang said.
Meanwhile, Wenny Wang (王文靜), CEO of Business Weekly, raised the question of what the future holds for media that are heavily dependent on subscription and retail sales when free content is easily accessible on the Web.
Taking the US magazine BusinessWeek as an example, Wenny Wang said the 80-year-old publication was sold to Bloomberg. Although the weekly has ventured into China, it is barely surviving because it is not familiar with the massive Chinese market.
“They have been there for a long time, but they have had a hard time biting into the big pie,” she said.
China Television chairman Lin Sheng-fen (林聖芬) said he hoped to see media outlets on both sides of the Strait gain more and freer access, adding that he would also like to see Taiwan and Beijing relax regulations to allow media outlets to establish branches on each side.
Given Beijing's tight grip on the media, Lin said Chinese have taken full advantage of the Web to integrate civic forces. He expected to see these private forces help each side better understand each other and eventually bring change to China.
Yang Jen-feng (楊仁烽), president of the Economic Daily News, said as China is becoming more open, the outside world is getting to know it better.
The media cooperation between Taipei and Beijing is multi-faceted, he said, including content, capital, technology and products.
Yang said both sides were bound to develop a closer relationship on various fronts, including media, after signing an economic cooperation framework agreement and financial memorandum of understanding.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS